The floor: $7.25, federal
The FLSA sets the national minimum wage at $7.25 per hour, unchanged since 2009. It is a floor, not a target: no state or city can go below it for employees the FLSA covers, but any of them can go above it — and most now do.
State rates: most states beat the floor
The large majority of states set their own minimum wage above $7.25, and many index it to inflation so it rises on a schedule (usually every January 1, sometimes July 1). When a state rate is higher than federal, the state rate is what applies. Where a state has no rate of its own, the federal $7.25 fills in for covered employers.
A small group of states — such as Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee — have no state minimum-wage statute at all. There, FLSA-covered employers pay the federal $7.25. This is a real legal fact, not a gap in the data, and each of those state pages explains it with the governing citation.
Local ordinances: the layer people forget
The layer that trips up the most paychecks is local. Cities and counties can set minimum wages above their state's, and some are far above. Washington State is the clearest example: the state rate applies statewide, but Seattle, Tukwila, Renton, Burien, Everett, Bellingham, SeaTac, and unincorporated King County each set higher local rates, several with employer-size tiers and mid-year increases.
For a worker in one of those cities, the state minimum wage is not the answer — the local one is, because it is higher. The Washington minimum wage calculator includes a local-jurisdiction selector for exactly this reason.
How the layers combine
The rule is simple once the layers are clear: you are owed the highest rate that legally covers you. Federal, state, and local do not average or offset — the most generous applicable law wins. A $7.25 federal floor under a $16.28 state rate under a $20.76 city rate means the city rate is your minimum wage.
Find your rate
Pick your state from the states directory to see its current verified rate, its scheduled increases, and — where they exist — its local rates. Every published figure links to the primary source it came from, and rates that have not been independently verified are deliberately not shown rather than guessed.